Most Chicagoans look at Lake Michigan and think recreation — a view and a beach, swimming and sailboats.
But the lake is also the site of a major freshwater port that draws oceangoing ships from the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Port of Chicago is in need of money to fix its aging infrastructure, and it hopes to snag a portion of the $35 million earmarked for Illinois ports in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s capital plan.
At the South Side port, Chicago still looks like the City of Big Shoulders — with barges docked along the Calumet River and a yard heaped with shining piles of steel and aluminum. Lime, chemicals, cement, grain, stone, industrial coke and wood also come through the port, and sugar is delivered to transit storage sheds, processed and put into freight hopper cars on its way to being made into Tootsie Rolls. The port is overseen by the Illinois International Port District, which connects the Great Lakes with the Illinois waterways that lead to the Mississippi River.
A cruise ship official once complained to the district’s executive director, Clayton Harris, III, that the port looked like a “junkyard.” But Harris sees something else.
“From my perspective, it’s beautiful. All this steel, all you see is the economy growing,” said Harris, a former prosecutor and state transportation official who has run the district since 2016.
The district, first established by the Illinois General Assembly in the 1950s, consists of the 190-acre Iroquois Landing at 95th Street, the Calumet River and Lake Michigan, and a 1,600-acre site at Lake Calumet. It also includes a golf course. After years of problems, and a scorching 2013 audit that found sloppy record-keeping and general poor oversight, the port has been slowly making a turnaround. In 2015, the district, which receives no tax money, had $34.4 million in liabilities and an operating loss of $1.1 million, according to a financial statement. This year, it will have $18.8 million in liabilities and an operating income of $800,000.
Harris said the district improved its books by clearing overgrown land to provide more space for tenants to rent, leasing out all its transit sheds — where goods are stored before being shipped out — adjusting contracts and getting the state to cancel a nearly four-decade-old $15 million loan.
Now the district is looking for more money to fix its aging infrastructure.
The Illinois Ports Association asked for $250 million for all ports, and the port district alone wanted $100 million. Pritzker’s draft $41.5 billion capital bill last month included $35 million for all 19 Illinois port districts.
Harris said he’ll take what he can get, and he’s happy the General Assembly has begun to recognize the ports’ importance to the state’s economy.
“It’s nowhere near what we need — but it’s awesome, ” Harris said. “We were never in the conversation before.”
Why $100 million? The district wants $25 million to rehabilitate the Lake Calumet dock wall and another $10 million for paving the roadway between the dock wall and the transit sheds, and the removal of old rail. The district also wants to build new transit sheds, replace the fire suppression system and add about a mile of additional rail at the Lake Calumet facility.
The sheds were built in the 1960s, and can get holes in the roofs, Harris said. “We run from one patch to another,” he said.
The North American Stevedoring Co., the district’s largest tenant, is fixing the badly deteriorated dock walls at Iroquois Landing, and getting a rent offset in exchange, Harris explained.
The district has been able to secure $17 million in federal, state and local grants for a major repair of Butler Drive at Lake Calumet, along with the rail line that runs through it. The road runs inside the Lake Calumet facility by the transit sheds and gets a lot of truck and rail traffic.
Right now, part of the road is not paved, and the track bed is in sad shape. The district plans to repave the road and raise and improve the track bed. Harris expects the project to be done by 2023.
Port district Chairman Michael Forde said the district had made “great strides” at shoring up its financial condition, but its budget is small and it doesn’t go far in terms of capital investment.
“Any expert will tell you that the value and utility of a port depends on two things — location and facilities,” said Forde, a lawyer for former Mayor Rahm Emanuel who was appointed to the board in 2011. “We have an absolute five-star location, at the intersection of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi shipping networks and in the railroad hub of North America. But our infrastructure has a lot to be desired, and that’s the result of our limited resources.”
The district attempted to privatize the port back in 2013, which could have brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, but the deal with Denver-based Broe Group fell through. Forde said it is considering bringing in a private manager, though Harris would remain. Forde said the management company would be contractually obligated to fund tens of millions of dollars in new construction.
The nine-member district board has five members picked by the mayor, and four by the governor.
District board member Paul Chialdikas said the port has started turning around at the same time that Chicago has become a “very desirable location” for shipping, because goods can go both east and west.
“If we invest properly and build the infrastructure properly, we can win,” Chialdikis said.
Transportation consultant Steve Schlickman said that the state has let port facilities fend for themselves for a long time, and that the Port of Chicago handles less cargo than it did 10 years ago. He noted that Port of Indiana-Burns Harbor across the lake is in better shape.
Before the state throws money to the district, Schlickman said there should be a clear picture of the opportunity loss of not investing in it.
“You have to see how it fits into the whole transportation system for the state,” Schlickman said.
The Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government research group, has argued that the district should not be under state authority with a paid board of directors. Laurence Msall , the group’s president, acknowledged that the district has made some progress in recent years, but said that to get state capital money, the district should provide more complete information about how it would spend it.
“Show your homework,” Msall said. “Show confidence that these (projects) will have a return on investment.”
Transportation song quiz
The song for our last quiz was a travelogue that has been performed by a range of artists, from the Andrews Sisters to Them. The song is “Route 66.” Pete Kain, of Palatine, got it first.
In keeping with the column’s watery theme, today’s song names the river towns of Beardstown, Alton and Pekin and looks forward to a jar of iced tea at journey’s end. What’s the song and who did it? The winner will get a Tribune pen, and glory.
mwisniewski@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @marywizchicago
